xref: /linux/Documentation/locking/mutex-design.rst (revision 0526b56cbc3c489642bd6a5fe4b718dea7ef0ee8)
1=======================
2Generic Mutex Subsystem
3=======================
4
5started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
6
7updated by Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com>
8
9What are mutexes?
10-----------------
11
12In the Linux kernel, mutexes refer to a particular locking primitive
13that enforces serialization on shared memory systems, and not only to
14the generic term referring to 'mutual exclusion' found in academia
15or similar theoretical text books. Mutexes are sleeping locks which
16behave similarly to binary semaphores, and were introduced in 2006[1]
17as an alternative to these. This new data structure provided a number
18of advantages, including simpler interfaces, and at that time smaller
19code (see Disadvantages).
20
21[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/164802/
22
23Implementation
24--------------
25
26Mutexes are represented by 'struct mutex', defined in include/linux/mutex.h
27and implemented in kernel/locking/mutex.c. These locks use an atomic variable
28(->owner) to keep track of the lock state during its lifetime.  Field owner
29actually contains `struct task_struct *` to the current lock owner and it is
30therefore NULL if not currently owned. Since task_struct pointers are aligned
31to at least L1_CACHE_BYTES, low bits (3) are used to store extra state (e.g.,
32if waiter list is non-empty).  In its most basic form it also includes a
33wait-queue and a spinlock that serializes access to it. Furthermore,
34CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER=y systems use a spinner MCS lock (->osq), described
35below in (ii).
36
37When acquiring a mutex, there are three possible paths that can be
38taken, depending on the state of the lock:
39
40(i) fastpath: tries to atomically acquire the lock by cmpxchg()ing the owner with
41    the current task. This only works in the uncontended case (cmpxchg() checks
42    against 0UL, so all 3 state bits above have to be 0). If the lock is
43    contended it goes to the next possible path.
44
45(ii) midpath: aka optimistic spinning, tries to spin for acquisition
46     while the lock owner is running and there are no other tasks ready
47     to run that have higher priority (need_resched). The rationale is
48     that if the lock owner is running, it is likely to release the lock
49     soon. The mutex spinners are queued up using MCS lock so that only
50     one spinner can compete for the mutex.
51
52     The MCS lock (proposed by Mellor-Crummey and Scott) is a simple spinlock
53     with the desirable properties of being fair and with each cpu trying
54     to acquire the lock spinning on a local variable. It avoids expensive
55     cacheline bouncing that common test-and-set spinlock implementations
56     incur. An MCS-like lock is specially tailored for optimistic spinning
57     for sleeping lock implementation. An important feature of the customized
58     MCS lock is that it has the extra property that spinners are able to exit
59     the MCS spinlock queue when they need to reschedule. This further helps
60     avoid situations where MCS spinners that need to reschedule would continue
61     waiting to spin on mutex owner, only to go directly to slowpath upon
62     obtaining the MCS lock.
63
64
65(iii) slowpath: last resort, if the lock is still unable to be acquired,
66      the task is added to the wait-queue and sleeps until woken up by the
67      unlock path. Under normal circumstances it blocks as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE.
68
69While formally kernel mutexes are sleepable locks, it is path (ii) that
70makes them more practically a hybrid type. By simply not interrupting a
71task and busy-waiting for a few cycles instead of immediately sleeping,
72the performance of this lock has been seen to significantly improve a
73number of workloads. Note that this technique is also used for rw-semaphores.
74
75Semantics
76---------
77
78The mutex subsystem checks and enforces the following rules:
79
80    - Only one task can hold the mutex at a time.
81    - Only the owner can unlock the mutex.
82    - Multiple unlocks are not permitted.
83    - Recursive locking/unlocking is not permitted.
84    - A mutex must only be initialized via the API (see below).
85    - A task may not exit with a mutex held.
86    - Memory areas where held locks reside must not be freed.
87    - Held mutexes must not be reinitialized.
88    - Mutexes may not be used in hardware or software interrupt
89      contexts such as tasklets and timers.
90
91These semantics are fully enforced when CONFIG DEBUG_MUTEXES is enabled.
92In addition, the mutex debugging code also implements a number of other
93features that make lock debugging easier and faster:
94
95    - Uses symbolic names of mutexes, whenever they are printed
96      in debug output.
97    - Point-of-acquire tracking, symbolic lookup of function names,
98      list of all locks held in the system, printout of them.
99    - Owner tracking.
100    - Detects self-recursing locks and prints out all relevant info.
101    - Detects multi-task circular deadlocks and prints out all affected
102      locks and tasks (and only those tasks).
103
104
105Interfaces
106----------
107Statically define the mutex::
108
109   DEFINE_MUTEX(name);
110
111Dynamically initialize the mutex::
112
113   mutex_init(mutex);
114
115Acquire the mutex, uninterruptible::
116
117   void mutex_lock(struct mutex *lock);
118   void mutex_lock_nested(struct mutex *lock, unsigned int subclass);
119   int  mutex_trylock(struct mutex *lock);
120
121Acquire the mutex, interruptible::
122
123   int mutex_lock_interruptible_nested(struct mutex *lock,
124				       unsigned int subclass);
125   int mutex_lock_interruptible(struct mutex *lock);
126
127Acquire the mutex, interruptible, if dec to 0::
128
129   int atomic_dec_and_mutex_lock(atomic_t *cnt, struct mutex *lock);
130
131Unlock the mutex::
132
133   void mutex_unlock(struct mutex *lock);
134
135Test if the mutex is taken::
136
137   int mutex_is_locked(struct mutex *lock);
138
139Disadvantages
140-------------
141
142Unlike its original design and purpose, 'struct mutex' is among the largest
143locks in the kernel. E.g: on x86-64 it is 32 bytes, where 'struct semaphore'
144is 24 bytes and rw_semaphore is 40 bytes. Larger structure sizes mean more CPU
145cache and memory footprint.
146
147When to use mutexes
148-------------------
149
150Unless the strict semantics of mutexes are unsuitable and/or the critical
151region prevents the lock from being shared, always prefer them to any other
152locking primitive.
153